Chapter 15 Coco
FIFTEEN
Coco
Louis Congo: A freed enslaved man, became the city’s executioner, tasked with carrying out brutal punishments.
Despite his role, Congo was known for showing mercy, often sparing individuals from the harshest sentences.
His story reflects the complex interplay of power, compassion, and redemption in New Orleans’ history.
The sound of the bunker’s lock disengaging drags me out of sleep. It’s low and metallic, the kind of noise that doesn’t belong to dreams. My eyes open before I decide to wake, my body already listening.
Footsteps follow, echoing through the concrete corridor. I know them now. The weight. The pace. Ridge doesn’t hurry, and he doesn’t hesitate. He’s moving toward the back of the bunker, toward me, and I’m upright before the thought fully forms.
The room stays dark except for the strip of light spilling in from the hall.
When he stops in the doorway, it’s like the space tightens around him.
He blocks what little light there is, all solid lines and contained force, and I can’t read his face from here.
I don’t need to. Something in the way he’s holding himself sets my nerves humming, the quiet kind of alert that comes right before something shifts.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Get dressed,” he says. His voice is clipped. Controlled. “You’re leaving.”
The words knock the air out of me. For a second, I just stare at him, trying to get my bearings.
“What?” I say. “Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
He doesn’t elaborate. He turns and walks out of view like the conversation is already over. He doesn’t give me anything more or allow for questions.
Something’s off.
“Wait,” I call after him. “Am I leaving-leaving? Or are we moving again?”
“You’re going home,” he says without stopping. “Enough with the questions.”
Home.
I wait for relief to hit. It doesn’t. My pulse kicks instead, hard and off-rhythm, and my chest tightens like my body is arguing with my brain.
This is what I wanted. I know that.
Still, the idea of leaving is wrong in a way I don’t have language for yet, like I’m stepping away from something unfinished and pretending that won’t matter later.
I move slowly, deliberately, hoping he’ll turn back, hoping he’ll give me something. Anything.
“Did something happen?”
He stops just outside the doorway but doesn’t face me. “Get dressed.”
The edge in his voice shuts me up. Whatever this is, he’s not offering context. I can’t tell if that’s because he doesn’t care or because he does.
Either option leaves a sting behind.
I pull on the first clothes I grab. My hands move on instinct when I reach under the mattress.
Nothing.
My pulse stutters.
I turn just as Ridge steps into the doorway again, the photos lifted between his fingers like evidence. Like a problem already solved.
My stomach drops. The air between us thickens.
“Looking for these?” he asks.
The words are a sucker punch to my chest.
My mouth goes dry. My mind races, trying to build a version of this that doesn’t end badly.
“I didn’t know what they were,” I say, and I hate how unsteady it sounds. “I found them in the desk.”
His brow lifts. The faint curve of his mouth isn’t humor. It’s something colder.
“In the desk in the room I asked you not to go into?”
“I was bored one day. The door was cracked, so I figured I’d explore. It was harmless. They didn’t seem like anything, but I got nervous, so I put them there to keep them safe until I could put them back.”
“Safe,” he says. “That’s what we’re calling hiding them now?”
“You came back, and I panicked,” I say. “I didn’t know I was leaving.”
He steps closer. Not rushed. Not aggressive. The photos dangle loosely from his hand, but his eyes stay locked on mine.
“So you planned to take them with you.”
“No,” I say quickly. “I didn’t have a plan. I don’t even know who those people are. It honestly all happened so fast. That’s it.”
He lets out a quiet sound that isn’t a laugh. “You’re a terrible liar.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “I’ve been locked in a bunker, Ridge. Forgive me for not handling my downtime with grace.”
He flips through the photos, detached, clinical. Then he pauses, holding one up to the low light.
“Who’s this?”
My gaze follows his finger. The man with the dark birthmark.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve seen him around, but I don’t know him.”
“Where exactly in the desk did you find them?”
“They were hidden. They were stuffed behind everything. That’s what drew my attention.”
“Hidden,” he repeats.
Then, evenly, “That man killed my father.”
The floor doesn’t just tilt. It drops.
For a split second, my body forgets how to breathe. Heat rushes to my face, then drains just as fast, leaving a hollow pressure behind my eyes. My fingers curl reflexively, nails biting into my palms like I need the pain to anchor me.
The pieces snap together in an instant. The rooms he never opened, the way his jaw locked whenever family came up, the silence he carried like armor.
His cold armor wasn’t about secrecy or paranoia. It was grief, contained so tightly it looked like control.
I’ve been living inside it without even knowing.
“I didn’t know,” I say immediately. The words tumble out before I can temper them. “I swear to you. I didn’t even know your father was dead until you told me. I wasn’t trying to betray you.”
His eyes snap to mine, sharp and hot beneath the restraint in his voice. Not wild. Focused. Like he’s holding something back with both hands.
“After everything,” he starts and then pauses, grabbing onto his beard. It’s the only tick I’ve noticed him do. A lump rises in my throat.
“Ridge.”
“You thought sneaking around would end well?”
The implication is painful to hear from him about me. It reframes everything, turning curiosity into intent. It makes me sound calculated instead of lost.
“I wasn’t sneaking,” I say, even though the denial tastes thin. “I just—”
“You just what?”
He steps closer. Not fast. Not angry. The restraint in it is worse than either.
The edge of the bed presses into my spine, a dull reminder that there’s nowhere to move without making it obvious I’m backing away.
“You hid them,” he says. “You didn’t have a plan. And the second I tell you you’re leaving, you go looking for them. I’m not a fucking idiot, Coco.”
He delivers it calmly, like he’s setting something down piece by piece and waiting for me to see the shape of it. Like he’s gauging how I will respond, watching me walk into his trap.
He tilts his head. “Explain that.”
My eyes drop to the photos in his hand. They look different now. Not keepsakes. Evidence. Proof that I crossed a line I didn’t know was there until I was already standing on the wrong side of it.
“Ridge, I don’t know what else to tell you.
I wasn’t looking for anything, they were shoved to the back, so I thought they might mean something.
And you came back here right afer I found them.
That’s it.” My voice drops without permission.
“Something seemed significant, but I had no idea what or why. That’s the extent of it. ”
“I wish I could believe you Coco.”
“I’m sorry.”
The words scrape on the way out. Not because I don’t mean them, but because I know they don’t fix anything. They don’t rewind the moment I realized I wanted to hold on to something that was never mine.
Ridge doesn’t answer right away.
He leans against the doorframe, one hand at his beard, thumb dragging slowly through the stubble as if he’s not aware he’s doing it. The photos hang loose in his other hand, edges bent slightly from where he’s been holding them too long.
His face gives nothing away. The silence stretches, not awkwardly, but uncomfortably. It’s deliberate, like he’s sorting through more than what I did, weighing outcomes I’m not meant to know.
My pulse thuds loudly in my ears. I wait for anger. For a decision I can brace for. Something sharp enough to react to.
Instead, there’s just this suspended quiet.
My thoughts spiral anyway. Is this why I’m leaving? Is this the moment he decides I’m more trouble than I’m worth?
The logic of that should steady me. I’m not his friend. I’m not even someone he knows. I’m here because he put me here. Trust was never part of the arrangement.
Still, I catch the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers tighten once around the photos before easing again. Whatever he’s holding back feels heavier than whatever he’s considering doing.
I’m not afraid of him. That’s what unsettles me most.
I feel evaluated. Repositioned. Like he’s recalibrating where I fit now that something shifted between us.
Then he tosses the photos onto the bed.
The sound is soft. Careless, almost. It lands harder than if he’d hurled them across the room.
“You’re going home,” he says.
His voice is even, but there’s a strain under it now, pulled tight like something held too long. “I don’t need this right now.”
The words shut something down inside me with a finality I wasn’t prepared for. Not an argument. Not a threat.
A line.
I look at the photos scattered across the bedspread, unsettled by the sense that something just closed, even if I can’t name what it was.
“Get your things,” he adds. “Leave mine where you found them.”
The sound is soft. The decision isn’t.
“You’re going home,” he says. “I don’t need this right now.”
The finality lands hard. Not relief. Not fear. Something quieter and more disorienting, like a door closing that I didn’t realize I was standing in.
My eyes drop to the photos, scattered where they fell. They look abandoned now. Unclaimed.
“Get your things,” he adds. “Leave mine where you found it.”
The drive is silent.
I sit stiffly in the passenger seat, shoulders drawn in, the quiet pressing close from all sides. It reminds me of being a kid after a mistake I couldn’t explain properly, when the punishment wasn’t yelling, just waiting.